I was scrolling trough my Kindle Highlights (you know you can see all your highlighted passages from Kindle books online, right?) when I came across the following highlights from The Exorcist. I don’t remember highlighting anything from it but I read it at the beginning of the year so maybe that’s normal.
Horror has a bit of a bad rap when it comes to quality prose but I hope this dispels that. I mean, these are just amazing, especially the second one.
He stood at the edge of the lonely subway platform, listening for the rumble of a train that would still the ache that was always with him. Like his pulse. Heard only in silence. He shifted his bag to the other hand and stared down the tunnel. Points of light. They stretched into dark like guides to hopelessness.
From these he had fled into love, but now the love had grown cold, and in the night he heard it whistling through the chambers of his heart like a lost and gently crying wind.
I am especially fond of the second example.
How about you, have any examples of great prose in horror?
On Books and Writing 